


Here In The Darkness...

by cinomarsh



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Frustration, Gen, blood mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-15
Updated: 2016-07-15
Packaged: 2018-07-24 03:21:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7491402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cinomarsh/pseuds/cinomarsh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chell needs a safe haven from testing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here In The Darkness...

Chell's boots pounded against the floor, her legs slicing the air and sending her forward with all the direct force of a freight train. She leaned forward into the run, barrelling towards a wall, not slowing in the slightest before placing a portal in front of her and practically soaring onto a new platform.

All of her muscles were tight, ready. Her hands balanced the gun between them, prepared to turn at a second's notice and cut a new hole in the fabric of space.

There was never margin for error.

Without so much as flinching, Chell jumped down from her perch, the long fall boots strapped to her legs absorbing all the shock as the woman practically hit the ground running. Her movements were calculated and precise. Exactly what she knew they wanted from her.

She didn't have time to slow or time to think. She grabbed a cube that had landed nearby and in seconds she was through another portal and at a button near the exit door. She dropped the cube on the button and the door opened with a satisfying click. Chell couldn't stand that sound, the sound that this place had forced her to crave at the end of each chamber. She didn't want anything here to decide what she felt.

Chell was the perfect subject. She did everything the tests required and more, overcoming every obstacle in her path. Aperture made her like this; a smooth, efficient part of a machine. It had beaten her flat like a piece of sheet metal. She was a leaf without a plant, isolated from anything that made her who she was. She was another set of limbs, another warm body for the only voice she'd ever heard in this place, the one cold companion watching her through every piercing red camera light, to use and dispose of at will. She knew the voice must be automated, but she also knew that when she solved a test particularly quickly, it sounded just the slightest bit more satisfied. She didn't want to know what the voice sounded like when it was displeased.

She ran the courses, solved the puzzles, beat the odds. She was a force to be reckoned with, every part of her poised and prepared to face anything and everything, pushing her way forward and furthering the greater machine she worked inside of.

It absolutely disgusted her.

Chell had never asked to be a pawn in someone's horrific game. Even if all that time in and out of cryosleep had taken almost all of her memories, she knew it couldn't rip away the memory of sun on her face, grass under her toes, the breeze gently brushing her arms. Fragmented feelings still stuck under her fingernails, on her ankles, on the back of her neck, places that time forgot to scrub them out of. She would never have chosen this life over the life those memories said she'd had; a free one, no tests to be solved, no one to suffer for. No matter how vague they felt now, those fragments were all she had been able to hold onto.

Every moment she spent testing for this place, having her life be unwillingly put on the line for a cause she didn't believe in, made her sick. She was restless, frustrated, and so, so tired. But she had no choice. The click of the door, the hum of the elevator; these weren't just the sounds of a test well solved. Those sounds meant another few  
minutes of survival she'd clawed away from Aperture.

She knew how dangerous this place was. She had seen her own death play out on her eyelids a million times. In her mind's eye she saw a turret's bullet lodge itself in her kneecap; she could see herself taking one misstep on a moving platform and pay for it with skin burned away by the acid below. She saw lasers slicing her in two, saw energy pellets blowing her to bits on impact, and saw one poorly executed fall leaving her completely incapacitated and vulnerable. These tests were virtually indomitable, so that was exactly what Chell had to become: indomitable.

As she stepped out of the chamber and into it's sister room, she took a deep breath. She didn't want any of those prying camera lights to see her do anything out of the ordinary, but inside she was smouldering. She wanted to dismantle aperture bit by bit, to burn every last piece of every last machine she could find. She wanted to smash her fists against the panels, leaving smears of red against the glaring white and feel the shock run up her arm, but she knew she couldn't afford that here. She clenched her teeth. All of her energy, all of her white-hot contempt, had to wait. She had to put it into testing. Bide her time.

As Chell surveyed the new chamber she spotted a panel to her right ever-so slightly ajar. Her heart skipped a beat with hope as she walked slowly towards it and, yes, when she peered around she saw a small room tucked just behind it. She glanced around quickly and, not seeing any security cameras yet, squeezed herself between the wall and the panel and stepped into the tiny space, just tall enough to stand in and wide enough to have an arm on either wall.

The second she was fully inside, she let out a huge sigh. "Pause" and "respite" weren't words in the Aperture vocabulary, and Chell had discovered long ago that the only rest openly provided to her was the fleeting seconds within elevators or the deep, dull unconsciousness of cryosleep. These secret hideaways were often the only true breaks she got from the combination of blank, lifeless uniformity and heart-pounding terror that were the trademarks of this facility.

Chell leaned over against the wall beside her, turning and sliding down to sit on the floor, setting her portal gun on the ground beside her and giving her right hand and wrist a good stretch. It made a few satisfying cracking sounds and all the tension she'd been clinging to ebbed away. Her tense shoulders and legs slowly unwound themselves as Chell gave another, quieter sigh. 

The only light source was the harsh piercing white streak that the broken panel allowed from the chamber outside, and besides that the tiny den was cloaked in shadow. With only that to work with, Chell could just barely make out a drawing on the wall opposite her. She squinted at it, waiting for her eyes to fully adjust. Drawings like these were in almost every den. They were her only connection to anything vaguely human. The man who made them drew himself sometimes. Sometimes he drew Chell. Between taking refuge in his hideouts and decoding his artwork, Chell felt closer to this mystery man than she did to anyone inside Aperture. Not that that was a high bar, really. She leaned forward slightly and her eyes were finally able to process the drawing.

It spanned almost ceiling to floor in the tiny room. It seemed as though it had been drawn with multiple different whiteboard markers and strange pungent gels she'd never seen before. It was a scene he had painted in the past; a grey and black mass attached to a ceiling spraying a room with what appeared to be gas and people running around screaming, flailing arms and lab coats fleeing in every direction. Chell recognized the painter's version of himself, hiding behind a companion cube in the corner. He looked scared, helpless and very, very small.

Chell couldn't be sure, but from the frequency with which she'd seen variations of this scene and the careful thought that seemed to go into each one, she didn't believe this situation to be purely fictional. Something horrible had happened to this man here.

After a minute or so just staring at the painting, Chell noticed that, unlike in his other artwork she'd seen so far, the artist had written a very small message in scribbly print at the bottom of this one: "stay alive".

Upon reading that, Chell leaned forward and dropped her head in her hands. The last bit of her strength left her as she sagged down. She shut her eyes.

She didn't cry. She had never cried here. But somehow that one line had struck a nerve, and she was so tired. Chell's highly logical brain told her to get up, keep testing, never any time to lose, but something held her back.

"Stay alive." That was all she'd been doing for all this time. Surviving. Continuing. Pressing on. But very rarely did she feel alive. She felt determination, fatigue, anger, a sick sense of familiarity when she saw the clear answer to a test, but she still felt like the facility had taken something from her. She had been stripped of her memories, identity, and everything that had ever made her feel human. "Alive" was not the right word. She felt blank. She felt empty.

Logical Chell reminded herself that her absence would be noticed after too long out of the test chamber, but the tiny, illogical part of Chell's brain was speaking up, if only briefly. It suggested that maybe no one would come for her. Maybe she could finally give up, roll onto her side and never move again. The sun would rise and set somewhere out in the world. She would stay there forever, slowly fading into oblivion, and no one would be the wiser. She'd never face another test. She'd never truly have to return to Aperture. It almost scared her, how appealing it seemed now. How easy.

Easy had never been enough for Chell.

Slowly, deliberately, Chell raised her head and stretched out her arm. She wasn't done with Aperture just yet. She was not going to let it back her into a corner. She was going to escape this place, and if she couldn't, she was certainly not going to let it take her willingly. She would go down kicking and scratching if she had to.

Chell maneuvered herself onto her knees. She looked to the side and saw her portal gun lying there, waiting. She only allowed herself a moment to linger before grabbing it, slipping her arm inside and holding on tight.

She took a deep breath and began to move toward the blinding sliver of white light, ready to welcome her back. It was always waiting for her.


End file.
